Making Text-to-Text Connections

Today is my first day of Spring Break!  It was so nice last night, knowing that I still had Monday to continue my laundry.  I tell you, adding one more child into the mix, I have more loads of laundry than I know what to do with. 

 

Anyways, I wanted to share something that my firsties did last week.  You know that moment usually second semester when you just absolutely fall in love with your class.  I mean, you always love your class, but that moment when so many ah-hahs happen, you can't help but become giddy.  That happened to me on Friday.  Last week we read lots of St.Patrick's Day books with leprechauns and how sneaky they are.

 

On Wednesday we read Fluffy's Lucky Day.  It was about a guinea pig that was tricked by a leprechaun when he tied red scarves to all the trees so his pot of gold wouldn't be found.

 

 

Then on Friday we read this book.  Sorry, can't get it rotated.

 

 

This was about Clever Tom, he thought he had found a pot of gold too, but when he left to get a shovel, that silly leprechaun tricked him and tied red scarves to all the trees also.  When I read that book, my smart kiddos, said, hey that's what happened in Fluffy's Lucky Day.  I said, "You're right, that's a text to text connection."  They are finally understanding and seeing all these connections and know when to make them.

 

Then if that wasn't good enough, one of my kiddos that has reading recovery said, "Hey, Mrs. G and I read a book where that same thing happened, the leprechaun tied scarves to trick the person."  And then another student said, "Hey, it's like we are making a tri-text-to-text connection." Get it, like three connections because we had been discussing the meanings of the prefixes uni, bi, and tri the week before. 

 

I love it when things just happen like that, no planning involved and how smart they have become.  So to extend the connections, I had them create this cute little craftivity from Babbling Abby's "Spelling for all Seasons," check that out here!

 

Students wrote: "Fluffy's Lucky Day reminds me of Clever Tom and the Leprechaun, because in both texts, the leprechaun tricked the characters by tying a red scarf to all the trees to protect his gold."

 

 

 

Originally, we were going to do our spelling words with it, but since this discussion came up, I couldn't resist putting our connections on paper.